Sex by Number

Pleasing the algorithmic gods is dangerous to your humanity

Did you hear of the incredibly sad story of Lily Phillips? She is an English OnlyFans influencer which is awful enough. But she announced some time ago that she would have sex with 100 men in a day, encouraging men from her audience to apply to have five minutes with her. A documentary of her day has been viewed millions of times.

Internet discussion covered the shamelessness of the stunt, the culpability of men who took Phillips up on her offer, consent, empowerment, and many other talking points from the sexual revolution. “Phillips' stunt has rekindled discussions about mental health and societal pressures in the digital era. As clips from the documentary continue to be shared online, it raises concerns about the influence of extreme online content and the impact on young people who are willing to push their boundaries for profit,” wrote Newsweek.

But there’s more going on here. Novelist Jordan Castro posted that the whole sad affair is a “logical conclusion of our age's shift toward algorithmic, numbers-based value.” He goes on:

“When we use numbers,” Michael Clune writes in Gamelife, “we are borrowing them from someone or something else. Probably numbers belong to the devil.” Numbers flatten and erase distinctions. They eat away at the spiritual substance of Life, and subsume the person from within.

Of course, God’ uses numbers too, but Castro’s point is well-made. When applied to people and their worth, they become bad measurements.

Much has been made of the slightly tearful aftermath, where Phillips said she “wouldn’t recommend” doing what she had just done. But Phillips’ regret seems to be mostly around disappointing her fans/customers due to the disconnect between the image she portrays online and the reality. She is a product. Phillips insists she enjoys sex and could not acknowledge the moral destruction she is bringing on herself by her fornication. She has vowed to break the world record with more men next time.

Writer Mary Harrington sees in Phillips an example of spiritual sickness: Phillips’ stunt should be “understood not in terms of liberal feminism or the sexual revolution or whatever, but as an instance of what we might describe as egregoric capture, and the medievals would have called demonic possession.” It’s not only the rending apart of bodies from a one flesh union, or even the way both parties were using each other. Rather, “trying to tabulate, quantify, and commodify even the most embodied, relational, intimate and subjective aspects of human life” for a collective, faceless audience, ratings, money and gawkers around the globe is evidence that “Legion still walks the earth, and we were looking right at it the whole time.”